D-Talks: Bulletin#59 – Top Digital Media Updates

The Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology and Google have partnered up to roll out “Build for Digital India”, a programme that aims to provide engineering students a platform to develop market-ready, technology-based solutions which would address key social problems! The programme will invite ideas from students to focus on areas of healthcare, agriculture, education, smart cities and infrastructure, women’s safety, smart mobility and transportation, environment, accessibility and disability and digital literacy.

Facebook’s Bounty Bug Scheme started in 2011, has awarded over $1.1 million to security researchers from more than 100 countries. The top three countries to receive said payout were: India, the US, and Croatia. It was an Indian security expert who played a crucial role in the latest incident of a data breach at the social media company though he didn’t report his discovery under the bug bounty programme.

With 90% of new internet users being native language speakers, e-commerce giant Flipkart felt the need to introduce a Hindi interface. Their aim is to attract 200 million customers with this addition. Flipkart will also introduce audio-visual navigation capabilities in its app in the upcoming phases to handhold first-time users.

The new schedule post feature of Facebook’s Creator Studio will see the ability for users to schedule content up till 6 months before the date! The biggest change is perhaps users being able to schedule Instagram grid posts and IGTV posts. There have been third-party apps for scheduling posts, however, Instagram’s algorithm prevented them from actually posting to the app!

Swiggy, known for its doorstep food delivery services, has come up with yet another innovative service for instant pickup and dropoff: Swiggy Go. By availing this service, consumers can send packages anywhere across the city, retrieve forgotten keys, lunch box pickups and dropoffs to and from the office, and even official documents for clients.

The government has recently relaxed the norms for single-brand retailers who have foreign investment to attract global players. They are now permitted to sell goods through online stores first to tap into the domestic market, before opening brick-and-mortar stores within two years. It has also relaxed certain provisions for complying with the mandatory 30 per cent local sourcing requirements.

As a first-of-its-kind concept, Brand Factory hosted the Brand Stock Exchange. Hosted on the company’s Facebook and Instagram pages, it was a digital IP that announced discounts in a bidding format. Available for 24 hours from the 3rd of September, customers got a chance to trade and grab products at the most discounted rates!

Fueled by low data tariffs, affordable smartphones and growing Internet usage, India is at the cusp of a massive online boom! The e-commerce market size of the country is predicted to reach $230 billion by 2028!Another 40-50 crore shoppers are expected to come online in 10 years, joining the nearly 10 crore online shoppers in India. Online shopping has outpaced the offline retail segment’s growth.